If Google Now isn’t cutting it, give Sherpa a try instead

Also in Android this week: backup with Carbon and get addicted to Candy Crush Saga.

We're gearing up for a heaping of forthcoming handset releases like the HTC One, which is available today on AT&T and Sprint. This week, we'll briefly talk about Sherpa, a third-party digital assistant application that's still in beta but definitely has some potential. We'll also cover a popular backup application that offers cloud-storing capabilities for a price, and we'll indulge in a little Facebook game that's recently captivated the mobile world.

Digital assistants feel so commonplace these days that it’s difficult to think of what it was like to use a smartphone before services like Google Now entered our lives. Now, we find ourselves using these services to refute heated dinner discussions, get directions when we’re in a jam, and check on the weather forecast before we leave the house. On Android, Google Now can only do so much and it still lacks some of the "personal assistant" elements of applications like Siri on iOS. Thanks to the operating system's open nature, however, there are third-party app developers coming out with their own personal assistants.

This week saw the launch of Sherpa Beta Virtual Assistant for Android, which uses Android's built-in voice recognition to hear what you have to say. Its Google Play page advertises that you can ask it anything you want about music, flights, and sports scores. You can even ask it to send a text message or post to your Facebook wall. Sherpa apparently also includes a predictive engine, where it uses things like location to predict your next step. In a way, it works a little like Google Now except that it talks back instead of popping up Cards.

It's definitely a beta application, however. When I asked it to fetch me the score for the San Francisco Giants game yesterday, it just directed me to the MLB's official website with the scores for all the games currently in progress. But it did successfully post to my Facebook wall, and found flights for me when I asked it to, though it wanted all of the specific information (including where I'm flying to, from where, and on what day) in one query. And when I asked it to find me a recipe for chickpea burgers, it misunderstood the words as "chicken P burgers" and directed me to YouTube videos of chicken sandwiches.

We also didn't get a chance to try out the predictive engine of the application, though it was very astute about what to ask next whenever we began a conversation.

Last week, we offered up a list of some of the better backup applications available for non-rooted phones in the Google Play Store. We received a few comments about Carbon, so we're including it in today's roundup.

After you download Carbon from the Play store, you must install the desktop application and tether the Android device before the backup process can begin. Windows users may have to install drivers, though rooted users won't have to go through this hassle. After the set up, you can use Carbon's free features, which include the ability to backup and restore data and applications from an SD card or a PC. If you'd rather backup to the cloud, you can shell out $4.99 for Carbon Premium via Google Play or PayPal to upload your data to Dropbox, Box, and Google Drive. Carbon Premium also removes the advertisements from the free version and offers automatic backup scheduling, as well as the ability to perform Android-to-Android syncing. That could really come in handy if you're planning on switching handsets this spring.

With all that's transpired this week, we figured we could toss in something sweet and brightly colored into the Android app roundup. If you're into puzzle games or social gaming, you may enjoy the match-three-or-more fun behind Candy Crush Saga. The mechanics of the game work similar to Bejeweled, but as you advance in the "saga" you'll have to solve miniature quests, which makes the game harder as you progress. In one of them, you're forced to try to get down various types of food to the bottom. The catch is that you only have a limited number of moves to do so, and not all of the food will fall down within the allotted moves, which may drive you to purchase one of the many boosters and charms to try and beat the level. You also only have a limited number of tries before the game puts you on a short break.

The game features over 100 different levels to play and there is even a leaderboard so that you and your friends can compare scores. For a casual game, it's really quite fun, even if some of its limitations (and obvious ploys to extract cash) can be a bit frustrating when you're that close to solving a level.

Speaking as an iPhone user, I would *love* to have a useful "digital assistant". I have found Siri to be less than capable at anything other than getting the current weather or telling me that she couldn't understand what song I want played.

She also refuses to send accurate text messages.

I've tooled around with the voice recognition in the Google app for the iPhone and it seems *much* better at knowing what I'm saying.

Carbon is nice but it's defiantly not the same thing has having root access plus a program such as Titanium Backup or SuperBackup. It seems that Carbon uses an Android feature called "adb backup" which app developers can diasble entirely; whereas the more advanced programs use root access to copy and restore files to the correct locations.

Digital assistants feel so commonplace these days that it’s difficult to think of what it was like to use a smartphone before services like Google Now entered our lives. Now, we find ourselves using these services to refute heated dinner discussions, get directions when we’re in a jam, and check on the weather forecast before we leave the house.

Taking quite a lot onto the 'we' there are we not?

I have no trouble thinking of what it was like to use a smartphone before Google Now entered my life, because it hasn't. Nor do I have any particular yearning to.

"and found flights for me when I asked it to, though it wanted all of the specific information (including where I'm flying to, from where, and on what day) in one query." the app is probably not telepathic.

I really wish there was an application that would allow me to just say out loud who I want to call, but so far I have not found one, single app that was able to cope with Finnish names. Yes, Google's offerings, this Sherpa, a dozen others Ive tried, they all fail horribly. Back in the day we had to "train" our phones first to recognize the names and setting it up was a chore, but atleast the damn thing worked fine!

"Digital assistants feel so commonplace these days that it’s difficult to think of what it was like to use a smartphone before services like Google Now entered our lives."

Who's this 'our' Kimosabe?

I don't know more than one person who uses it and they admit it's usually pretty awful. This applies to many other people don't know who have expressed similar encounters with this badly implemented phenomenon. If your enunciation isn't crystal clear, it's utterly useless. Voice recognition software's been around for decades, but it still has a hell of a long way to go before a "digital assistant" will be anything other than an impractical means of getting angry which desperately needs to be digitally strangled before it has a chance to spike the national blood pressure average.

Perhaps the author is one of the lucky ones whose voice is easily interpreted correctly by their digital drone and she's doing what many people do by taking her experience as the "norm" for everyone else. Maybe it's group delusion where no one is willing to admit how badly it sucks to anyone else out of embarrassment over the way they gushed about it when they first got it. And this all ignores the fact that your voice is likely recorded and sent to servers to help "improve the user experience" when you use one. That means some company has your voice on file with little or no context about what was said for up to two years.

-sarcasm- Yeah, I don't see how THAT could go wrong for you. -/sarcasm-

But for whatever reason, digital drones still have a very, very long way to go before they're useful, private and practical.

"Digital assistants feel so commonplace these days that it’s difficult to think of what it was like to use a smartphone before services like Google Now entered our lives."

Who's this 'our' Kimosabe?

I don't know more than one person who uses it and they admit it's usually pretty awful. This applies to many other people don't know who have expressed similar encounters with this badly implemented phenomenon. If your enunciation isn't crystal clear, it's utterly useless. Voice recognition software's been around for decades, but it still has a hell of a long way to go before a "digital assistant" will be anything other than an impractical means of getting angry which desperately needs to be digitally strangled before it has a chance to spike the national blood pressure average.

Perhaps the author is one of the lucky ones whose voice is easily interpreted correctly by their digital drone and she's doing what many people do by taking her experience as the "norm" for everyone else. Maybe it's group delusion where no one is willing to admit how badly it sucks to anyone else out of embarrassment over the way they gushed about it when they first got it. And this all ignores the fact that your voice is likely recorded and sent to servers to help "improve the user experience" when you use one. That means some company has your voice on file with little or no context about what was said for up to two years.

-sarcasm- Yeah, I don't see how THAT could go wrong for you. -/sarcasm-

But for whatever reason, digital drones still have a very, very long way to go before they're useful, private and practical.

Amen.

And Apple just admitted they keep voice records from all Siri conversations for 2 years. Yeah, that's really going to help me want to get an I-anything ever!

This really is one of the fluffiest articles from Ars in an era which has lately started showing a disturbing trend of posting fluff and borderline ads for "facebook phones" and other crap disguised as articles. I really hope I am imaging it.

"Digital assistants feel so commonplace these days that it’s difficult to think of what it was like to use a smartphone before services like Google Now entered our lives."

Who's this 'our' Kimosabe?

I don't know more than one person who uses it and they admit it's usually pretty awful. This applies to many other people don't know who have expressed similar encounters with this badly implemented phenomenon. If your enunciation isn't crystal clear, it's utterly useless. Voice recognition software's been around for decades, but it still has a hell of a long way to go before a "digital assistant" will be anything other than an impractical means of getting angry which desperately needs to be digitally strangled before it has a chance to spike the national blood pressure average.

Perhaps the author is one of the lucky ones whose voice is easily interpreted correctly by their digital drone and she's doing what many people do by taking her experience as the "norm" for everyone else. Maybe it's group delusion where no one is willing to admit how badly it sucks to anyone else out of embarrassment over the way they gushed about it when they first got it. And this all ignores the fact that your voice is likely recorded and sent to servers to help "improve the user experience" when you use one. That means some company has your voice on file with little or no context about what was said for up to two years.

-sarcasm- Yeah, I don't see how THAT could go wrong for you. -/sarcasm-

But for whatever reason, digital drones still have a very, very long way to go before they're useful, private and practical.

Completely agree, but just want to point out (being one of my favorite terms of address), that it's "kemosabe" or "kemosahbee".

Maybe he was speaking about him/herself and significant other? Maybe not. Not sure it is enough to get your briefs twisted for. Then again, that is all a personal issue anyways, isn't it? Much like your fear of them keeping context-less messages about you for up to two years; for me this isn't a problem either, in fact I just 'donated' at least 30 voicemail messages to Google Voice this morning for manual transcription to improve the service for others.

I've seen three groups on this issue:

{*} Those who find it completely idiotic and unhelpful;{*} Those who find it extremely useful and helpful; and{*} Those who are completely paranoid (because, yeah, the 'terrrrrror!')

You note that you know not a single person that uses it or finds it useful, and I find that very hard to believe, but sure if you live in the swamps of Louisiana or a technological backwater it could be the case. My wife has an extreme Romanian accent and her Android 2.3 phone couldn't recognize crap, but her new 4.0 is spot on. My country relatives also have little problem.

It is used by many of my friends and coworkers with simple things like: Give me directions to the post office -or- Where is the nearest coffee shop.

Out of all of them, the only ones that seem to have enunciation recognition problems on the phone are the ones with older handsets, those drunk, or the ones that you always say 'Could you repeat that?' to in conversation.

This of course highlights another issue, extreme laziness of speech. I do like how the poster above complained about having to enunciate properly. Even then, I've been quite surprised at the contextual capabilities of the digital assistants in understanding 'their' vs 'there' even when the lazy-tongued individual refuses to differentiate.

"Digital assistants feel so commonplace these days that it’s difficult to think of what it was like to use a smartphone before services like Google Now entered our lives."

Really? I don't know about you, but I think the majority of people barely use them. Google Now is on a vast minority of Android phones, and Siri isn't especially common amongst iPhone users, except the novel factor when you first upgrade.

Hell, I barely use Google Now and I would consider myself a smartphone enthusiast.

Anyone know aof a unified messaging app? Coming from an N9, I miss the contact-centric stock app. Where facebook, google and SMS messaging all used the same app. My Android friend says "oh it doesn't matter because you just use the notification" which is fine when I receive and want to reply. But not when I want initiate. Also, a different user interfaces for each medium to send a chat? Come on guys...

Anyone know aof a unified messaging app? Coming from an N9, I miss the contact-centric stock app. Where facebook, google and SMS messaging all used the same app. My Android friend says "oh it doesn't matter because you just use the notification" which is fine when I receive and want to reply. But not when I want initiate. Also, a different user interfaces for each medium to send a chat? Come on guys...

I'm not sure how it handles all your requirements, but I saw someone on another website mention something called "Reach BETA" in response to a similar question.

I apologise in advance if doesn't meet your requirements.

//edit: Having looked at it myself, it seems to be a nice looking app to receive and send sms from your pc, as well as doing some rather fancy browser based call initiation (which I can't see as being vital, but a nice gimmick)

Don't download Candy Crush Saga. Their advertisements on my favourite website are nearly malware. They automatically open Google Play without me touching them, while the page is still loading.

You could just about call it a browser hijack, except it's worse as it has the power to open an application on my phone. Horrible unethical advertising.

Glad you mentioned this. Not only did it keep showing up every time I tried to go to (I think it was) WSJ, I couldn't get back to read the intended article because hitting back from Play just reloaded the page, which re-triggered the script.

Sounds like they need an "I'm sorry, I don't recognize that name. Please open it manually, and I will remember it next time" option.

That way it could link your pronunciation of the name to the contact on file.

So much this. As good as GN is for me, I do wish it would learn - or, at least, give the appearance of learning. Getting nothing but an error message is pretty annoying. (That is, of course, when it just gets the wrong text altogether.)

Florence Ion / Florence was a former Reviews Editor at Ars, with a focus on Android, gadgets, and essential gear. She received a degree in journalism from San Francisco State University and lives in the Bay Area.